Current limiting is the practice in electrical or electronic circuits of imposing an upper limit on the current that may be delivered to a load with the purpose of protecting the circuit generating or transmitting the current from harmful effects due to a short-circuit or similar problem in the load.
In addition to protecting the circuit that consumes current, a typical current limiting circuit also reduces power consumption by shutting off a pass device such a transistor when the current passing through the pass device exceeds a predefined threshold or regulates the pass device to keep the current through the pass device at the threshold value.